Friday, August 26, 2011

This message is about choices. It’s not a sermon on how you should live your life. Nor is it political commentary or economic analysis. It’s about looking at the world around you and asking yourself if this paradigm is sustainable. Is it possible that my world could be disrupted by the chaos and uncertainty of an emergency? Over the last three year, some people have accused me of swirling fear, but that was never my mention. I want to empower people by encouraging them to take the necessary action to protect themselves and their families. So I tell people to plan ahead and figure out how they will respond to various emergencies.

Most of my advice is common sense, but unfortunately, common sense has become rare in this superficial world of ours. What was once common practice is now viewed as the extreme, eccentric and absurd. In the early 1900s and early, it was common place for Americans to can and store food. Many Americans lived in rural areas, grew vegetables and fruits in the spring and stored meats in the winter. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 43.9% of the American people lived in rural areas in 1930. Since then, the population has gravitated to cities and suburbs. In 1990, over 75% of the population lived in urban areas. (1)

What this means is that the nature and the functionality of the country has dramatically changed. Thanks to the advancement in technology, farms cans use machines to triple their production of food, hence reducing the number of necessary workers. Because so few Americans like in rural areas, most people have no idea how to grow crops and manage livestock. So most of us rely on a number of systems to access our food. Corporate farming has only added to the population’s dependence on farming, because corporations buy up land and reduce the number of small family farms. Most Americans buy corporate food. This food is usually not locally grown and as a result, the food goes through a massive (but vulnerable) system before it is able to get to the local grocery store.

Think about how vulnerable and complicated the system has become. First, corporations use genetic engineering to alter the crops (e.g. in size). Second, they use diesel gas to power the large machines (tractors) to develop and extract the crops. They even need oil to fuel the planes and machines that spray the crops with pesticides. Third, they use electricity from natural gas and coal to power the machines that organize and package the products. Not only do they use petroleum to move the products down the assembly line, but the packaging itself requires petroleum. Plastics come from petroleum, cans require metal to be formed by heat energy. And don’t forget that the corporations need gas to transport the cans and metal to the proper facilities. Do you see a pattern forming?

You need a lot of energy to produce corporate food on a massive scale. And the corporations need this energy before the food even leaves the plant. In many cases, the corporations must transport food from the farms to the packing facilities and the trucks or trains require energy to function. After the food is packaged, the item is shipped to a distribution center. Fifth, every item that enters the corporations database is put into a delivery system that organizes the delivery of items to stores based on a “just-in-time” delivery system. But the corporation needs energy to keep the distribution center running and diesel to keep the trucks moving. Finally, when the food finally gets to your store, it often needs to be refrigerated. And that requires a lot of energy to. So corporations are spending energy to freeze the food at the plants and putting them into refrigerated trucks that also require energy.

Now, imagine if this system didn’t require stores to stock food in massive warehouses as a precaution. Imagine or not, this is reality. The “just-in-time” system doesn’t rely heavily on reserves being stored in warehouses. Insist, the trucks are the warehouses. The computer systems gather the data from the stores and use the databases to calculate what stores need what. And if everything goes well, the items arrive just in time for the store to stock the shelves. The problem is that if the system is damaged at any point, food supplies drop. If there is a gas shortage, then the cost of producing, packaging and transporting food rises. If the U.S. dollar collapsed, it would mean that central banks across the world began dumping U.S. treasuries and dollars. This would send a massive influx of dollars to the U.S., but would force Americans to provide a lot more dollars for the oil they need for their unusually high standard of living.

Oil is relatively cheap in America, because the oil-producing countries have agreed to sell their oil exclusively in U.S. dollars. This makes the U.S. dollar the world’s reserve currency. So while other countries must implement more sensible monetary policies, the U.S. central bank (the Federal Reserve) can print dollars at will. The result is that it lowers the value of the dollar, but the burden is placed on the taxpayers. This scam allows the government to borrow excessive amounts on money from the Federal Reserve, while using the funds for empire-building around the world. The United States of America has a consumer-based economy. We went from American factories, American manufacturing plants, gold-backed currency, big middle class and small mom-and-pap stores in the 1950s to third world factories, distribution centers, fiat currency, credit cards, and Walmart in 2000s. Ask yourself, is this sustain? Again, you have a choice. You can either look at your reality and plan for the most likely scenarios.

Option A: Assume Everything will go your way, all of the time.

This option is for anyone for believes that the U.S. economy is sustain, the government is solvent and political system is legitimate Of course, you would have to ignore the failures of Washington D.C. in responding to the economy mess: the bailouts, stimulus and jobs program. Both Republicans and Democrats have supported the corporate bailouts and some form of stimulus, either it was Bush or Obama’s schemes. By selecting this option, you would also have to ignore the estimated $600+ trillion dollars in derivatives and the zombie banks. You also need to hope that gold falls from the sky, so that the federal government can pay tens of trillion dollars in debt obligations. John Williams (shadowstats.com) used GAAP accounting to calculate that the U.S. government has over $71 trillion in debt obligations as of 2010. (3)

Keep in mind, that selecting this option means that you believe that you will never face a natural disaster (tornado, earthquake, flood, etc.) or man-made disaster (terrorist attack, nuclear accident, war, economic meltdown, dollar collapse, etc.) for the rest of your life and therefore, it makes no sense to prepare. If you selected this option and lived in Japan when the nation was it with a 8.9-magnitude earthquake that causes massive tsunamis to kill thousands of people on March, you may have wished that you had more emergency supplies.

Perhaps you will be fortunate enough to never need emergency supplies, but having them will provide peace of mine. And on the other hand, if someone does happen, you’ll be better prepared. But you don’t prepare and something does happen, you’ll be making life a lot harder on yourself. Remember, it only takes one disaster to make Option A the worse decision you’ve ever made.

Option B: Starting Prepping (preparing for an emergency)

If you choose this option, you should start with examining things that you need most to stay alive. Air, water, food and people.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The White House Insider told blogger Ulterman that the Obama campaign was gearing up to use raxe as a weapon against the GOP in 2012. The Insider claims that Team Obama is convinced that this is there only way to victory in 2012. The Insider said,

"…White guilt got Barack Obama the nomination. White guilt got Barack Obama into the White House. At least it was a big part of it…they are not sure they can run on the economy by summer of 2012."

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's factory index collapsed to a -30.7. That's an enormous drop. The Labor Department has received around 400,000 or more new applications for unemployment benefits for the 18th consecutive week. I think it's safe to say that the economy isn't improving and Obama won't be running on his economic record next year.

"Motivation is way down – the people on the ground. Many of them will be sitting this one out."

You think? Young voters are very reactionary and the mythology of "The Great One" has faded. He won't have as nearly many college students campaigning for him. And given the motivation of the conservatives in 2010, I doubt you can expect blacks to be overrepresented in the 2012 election. Obama's average approval rating is hovering below 44% with 50% disapproving of his work. He even scored a record low 38% approval rating in Gallup's latest poll. This is Bush territory.

"The campaign conducted over five internals in the last few months. Each time the one issue that came back favorably for the president was the color of his skin. People are not comfortable…white people are not comfortable going against a person of color. At least not a whole lot of them."

First of all, Latinos are being hit harder by the economic downturn than whites, so it may be unrealistic to expect them to remain loyal to a leader that is clearly failing. I think the race card strategy is more likely to alienate the president from both whites and Latinos. The black vote will be there no matter what. But if the white voters turn out in decent numbers and his remains unpopular, Obama will lose big. As of August 2011, his approval ratings (Gallup) among whites stands at 32%. Remember, Obama captured 43% of the white vote in 2008.

Even with the growth of the Latino population, this performance among whites will destroy his chances on winning in 2012. In 2008, 63% of Latino voters voted for him. As of August 2011, only 44% of Latinos support Obama. Unless Obama can start a bigger war or pull a GOP opponent who is very weak, 2012 is going to be a nightmare for the President.

…They got an entire plan to utilize it. Targeting certain states. A media campaign. Use it as a weapon against prospective opponents…"

Newsflash: No one watches MSNBC.

The map above is a display of states that I think Obama can win. The blue states should be easy for Obama to win, the red states will be easy for a competent Republican to win and the gray will be swing states. Obama barely won Indiana and North Carolina in 2008, so they certainly won't be achievable for Obama in 2012.

Wisconsin and Minnesota are reliably blue states, except their union power base has weaken dramatically and recent recall elections proved that the GOP didn't doom themselves by standing up to the unions. SO these states may be in play. Demographic trends in Virginia still make it a state that Obama can win. It has a growing population of Washington liberals, college students and blacks. The map below is what I think Obama will most likely be dealing with if things don't involve.

When you look at Rasmussen's Daily tracking, the number of Americans who have strongly supported Obama has been dwarfed by the amount that strongly oppose throughout his presidency. This shows a major deficit in in enthusiasm for Obama for 2012.

Using race as a key issue in 2012 will open the door for the GOP to use his history with Rev. Wright and the Obama administration's racial bias in the New Black Partner Party. For the record, Wright is right about the U.S. war against drugs and all around injustice. But his crazed rhetoric about various groups is divisive and irresponsible. The comment about U.S. of KKK is idiotic.

The next GOP nominee may not be afraid to attack Obama, unlike John McCain. Obama bringing the issue up may paved the way for an opponent to effective in attack him on the New Black partner issue. Rick Perry is a snake, he'll know how to exploit these issues with skill and cover. Just look at how he handled Texas' TSA bill. He used the bill to boast his standing, secretly killed that bill, brought it back so he could exploit it more and then had the Texas Legislature pass a watered down version of the bill.

Frankly, his Democratic buddies have already played that card to death and I think he'll get a nasty backlash. I think a hardcore race-based campaign preying on "White Guilt" will alienate a lot of the new voters who supported him last time. It would also motive white voters who are already angry about the economy. I don't know if the White House Insider is correct, but if Obama tries this, it will tear this country apart. And if the country is in chaos, no one will have faith in the leadership. But maybe I'm wrong. I'm curious, do you think the race card will work will for Obama in 2012.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

It's August 10th, 2011 and we all know that something is wrong. If you've been paying attention to Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente, Jim Rogers, Michael Ruppert or one of the many youtube personality that warned about the economy, then you probably aren't surprised by what's happening.

Dow DOWN 630 on Monday, UP 450 on Tuesday and DOWN 510 on Wednesday. The S&P has lost about over 5% this wee and it's only Wednesday. My prediction that gold would hit 1700 dollars an oz was vindicated this week. Today, gold hit $1,800. This comes after the S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating.

CNN’s Jack Cafferty asked his audience if James Carvey was right about his assessment of the social economic situation in the country. If the economy doesn't improve, could we see violence? Of course, it could. And it will. We're seeing thousands of workers take to the streets in the Philippines to protest low wages, riots in Athens and throughout Greece, civil unrest in the United Kingdom, 1,000 cab drivers hold up traffic in China to protest raising fuel cost, large anti-government protests in Syria, 250,000 Israelis protesting in Tel Aviv.

For years, I've heard Europeans talk about how they didn't have pro gun laws in their country because they didn't need them. "It's safe, here." Really? Tell that to the law abiding citizens of Tottenham and other UK areas that are being terrorized by mobs of violent teenagers destroying shops and stealing. Where's the police, now?

And now many Americans are realizing that the jobs aren't coming back. We've had at least 400,000 Americans applying for unemployment benefits every week for the last 17 weeks. The GDP numbers turned out to be a total joke. The first quarter's (supposed) 1.9% growth was revised to 0.4%. With raising inflation and government spending artificially expanding GDP, it is clear that the 0.4% is hiding a deep contraction in the economy. As the standard of life sinks, people will start to lash out. Poverty is spreading and the middle class is shrinking. We now have 45.7 million Americans collecting food stamps. According to the Department of Agriculture, The number of participants jumped 1.1 million in one month (from April to May).

Apr 2011 44,647,861
May 2011 45,753,078

Remember these words: Civil Unrest is coming to America. We already have our share of teen mobs running a mok.

So what can you do about this situation. prepare your family for an emergency. My video below will help you get started.